s over sixty years of age. You're--you're out."

Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of
crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a
queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse
in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had
of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan
pretty hard with what he said.

"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month.
Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her--there's two
weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them
two weeks."

Regan nodded--there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't
have spoken them if there had.

"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like
to have her have them two weeks."

Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his
breath, and cleared his throat again.

"What'll you do, Dan--afterwards?"

Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan--and smiled.

"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "I dunno; but it'll
be all right. We'll get along somehow." His eyes shifted to the
roundhouse again. "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he
said--and turned abruptly away.

Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight
shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared
inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly
across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house. "Don't tell
her"--the words kept reiterating themselves insistently--"don't let the
boys tell her."

"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself. "I
guess they won't."

Nor did they. The division and Big Cloud kept the secret for those two
weeks--and they kept it for long after that. The little old lady in
the lace cap never knew--they ranked her high, those pioneering women
kind of hers in that little mountain town, those rough-and-ready
toilers who had been her husband's mates--she never knew.

But everybody else knew, and they watched old Dan as the days went by,
watched him somehow with a tight feeling in their throats, and kept
aloof a little--because they didn't know what to say--kept aloof a
little awkwardly, as it were. Not that there seemed much of any
difference in the old engineer; it was more a something that they
sensed. Old Dan came do